Case Study - Sibelco UK

John McColl, Regional Maintenance Manager and Roger High, Electrical Supervisor at Sibelco UK both completed their apprenticeships with the College and knew it to be of an excellent standard, so they knew exactly where to come when they wanted to take on new staff.

Sibelco UK is based just outside King’s Lynn and currently employs 3 apprentices, hopefully increasing to 5 in the next year. Sibelco operates sites throughout the UK, selecting, extracting and processing materials from reserves of silica sand, ball clay, kaolin and dolomite.

When asked about using the College for training their apprentices John and Roger said: “The location of the college to our King’s Lynn site is ideal and allows for the partnership between us to run smoothly. The support, communication and feedback we receive from college staff is outstanding and their ability to tailor the training to fulfil our business needs is a massive benefit.

The Apprentices we take on are the future of Sibelco and we hope they will be with us for many years to come. By starting as an Apprentice we feel they have more commitment to the company and we help them with any training they/we feel necessary. This in turn keeps staff turnover at a minimum and reduces advertising costs. They are all young Apprentices who have no history with Sibelco so they all bring with them fresh ideas and new ways to solve problems.

We would absolutely recommend the College to other businesses, the training offered by the College of West Anglia has been very beneficial and the ability to tailor this training to our needs is essential to the running of the business. This is shown in the high calibre of Apprentices we have and the excellent results they are achieving.”